Evaporating Silk

A couple of years ago one of my online fabric sources had an incredible sale on silk charmeuse; I bought 4 yards of a deep red, thinking I'd at last get a pair of silk charmeuse PJ's for a reasonable PJ price. I'd made the PJ's out of 3.5 yards of fabric before; I thought 4 yards would be plenty.

About a year or so ago I threw the silk on the cutting table and cut the first 'table load' - the back, sleeves, back facing, pockets and leg band. Then I pulled the next chunk of fabric on to the table to continue and discovered that I didn't have enough fabric.

Turns out was 42" wide instead of 45" wide.

I bundled everything up and threw it in a bag, but it has bugged me ever since. At that price, I should've bought enough for PJ's and a blouse and lining for a jacket...what was I thinking???

Anyway, fast forward to the present. We've had reservations for dinner for weeks at the bread-and-breakfast place where we went for our 30th anniversary and I'm determined to enjoy it. If my throat were screaming raw it might be different, but it's not, so we're going, and I though I'd try to throw together something pretty to wear. I traced off and altered the little top from Simplicity 2570 and then I pulled out the bagged up charmeuse and began to creatively cut it out.

I got the back of the blouse from the PJ back and the little cap sleeves and neckline facings from the sleeves. I only had to cut the shirt front/side front from the remaining yardage, and I could cut them pretty much side-by-side, so I didn't cut a lot more fabric from the uncut length. I'm going to skip the bias band on the sleeve; I'll just turn-and-stitch to finish that edge, or maybe I'll cut bias strips from the leg bands and seam them end-to-end. There'd be too much waste fabric around a long bias strip.

I changed the thread on the sewing machine, fused the interfacing to the neckline facings and hit the wall; as much as I wanted to finish the top, I was out of steam. But it's ready to go as soon as I'm up to it.

According to the pattern envelope, the top takes 1.5 yards of fabric in the largest size. And I have just about exactly 1.5 yards left. I'm having a hard time believing I had an entire yard disappear in the remnants of my PJ top...but maybe I did, counting the scrap fabric in the original layout. I'll get another sleeveless top or a scarf from the rest of the fabric, sometime down the road, but meantime, I've learned my lesson...

Don't skimp on the fabric order! ;)